A pounding impact knocked him loose again as the TEL slammed into the plane behind him.
He rolled diagonally down the ramp, snatching at the rearmost jack — and again missed. The black sky opened out hungrily below—
A hefty steel eyelet protruded from the ramp’s edge. Eddie thumped hard against it, a fierce pain cutting deep into his chest as a rib cracked — but he grabbed the obstruction to halt his fall just as his legs went over the side. The wind swirling around the Antonov’s stern tore at him. He battled to haul his legs back on to the ramp, then looked up.
The transporter was wedged under the An-124’s tail, its cab partly crushed between the lower edge of the fuselage and the ramp, and the starboard clamshell door buckled inwards. He couldn’t see Nina inside — but he spotted Kang sprawled halfway across the hold where he had been thrown by the collision.
The colonel shook his head dizzily, startled by the sight of the truck half buried in the aircraft’s side — then he saw Eddie hanging from the ramp.
His pistol had ended up near the hold’s port side. He scrambled up and ran for it.
Eddie realised what he was doing and dragged himself higher, lunging to grab the hydraulic jack. This time he caught it, pulling himself to his feet and swinging around it, using its hinge as a starting block to propel himself up the slope—
Kang snatched up his gun and spun to point it at the Englishman.
47
‘What the hell was that?’ cried the pilot as the aircraft lurched sideways. ‘Something hit us!’
One of the aircrew behind him spotted the cause. ‘Look!’ he said, pointing at one of the hold’s CCTV feeds. The image was of the open rear doors — into which was wedged the truck.
Petrov hurriedly turned back to his controls. ‘We’ve got to shake it loose,’ he said. ‘If we try to land with that thing stuck there, it’ll tear us in half! Everyone hold on!’
He threw the enormous aircraft into a hard bank to starboard.
Kang staggered as the deck tipped beneath him. He fired — but missed, the bullet whipping past Eddie’s head. The Antonov’s roll continued, its nose dropping as the wings lost lift.
What had foiled the Korean was helping the Yorkshireman. The change in the plane’s attitude both angled him away from the ramp’s treacherous edge and shallowed the gradient he had to climb. He pounded up it, charging at Kang—
The colonel realised he was losing his footing and hurled himself at the hold’s port wall. A dangling strap flapped madly in the wind; he seized it with his free hand and turned to face his foe — just as Eddie dived at him. Both men slammed against the fuselage ribs, grappling for the gun.
Nina fought through a blinding headache and opened her eyes, finding herself sprawled across the seats. Sitting up, she got two shocks: the first discovering the transporter jammed against the ramp; the second the fact that previously clear headroom was now filled with crumpled metal. The cab’s ceiling had been crushed by the clamshell door. If she had still been sitting upright, she would have been decapitated.
There was no time to reflect on her lucky escape. The Antonov was banking steeply to the right, and the weight of the transporter’s chassis hanging out over nothingness was causing its back end to swing outwards as overstressed steel gave way.
A squeal from the windscreen. Cracks spread down the wide pane as the unyielding fuselage ground down on it—
The window exploded.
A gale blasted into the cab. Instinctual reflex saved her eyesight, but with a hundred-knot slipstream behind it, even laminated safety glass was enough to slash her face. She was thrown backwards, barely able to breathe.
The transporter jolted, twisting out from the tailcone as the An-124’s bank steepened…
A new alarm shrilled in the cockpit, accompanied by an incongruously calm synthesised female voice. ‘Stall warning. Level out. Stall warning. Level out…’
‘Shit!’ gasped Petrov, straining to stay upright in his chair as the artificial horizon banked past forty-five degrees. Increasing power would stop the plane from falling out of the sky, but going any faster with a huge truck jammed into the fuselage ran the risk of losing control. All he could do was obey the robotic instruction and hope the vehicle fell away of its own accord. The Antonov responded sluggishly, nausea rising in its occupants’ stomachs.
Sek, clinging to one of the rear seats, looked at the monitor. The transporter was still there, its battered nose slewing around. But his eyes snapped to something on the other side of the ramp — Colonel Kang, clinging to a strap as he fought with the bald spy.
He knew he had to help his commander, but his lack of either Russian or English meant that getting the aircrew to put him on the plane’s loudspeaker system would take too long. Instead he rushed from the cockpit to give orders to the other soldiers in person.
‘Lock that fucking door!’ Petrov shouted as the plane levelled out. One of the crew slammed the bulletproof hatch and bolted it. ‘Don’t let any of the little bastards back in!’
The stall warning shut off. He watched the airspeed indicator until it climbed back to its previous mark, then tipped the Antonov into another sharp bank.
Eddie grappled with Kang, one hand clamped around the Korean’s gun arm as he drove punches into his stomach with the other. As long as the squat officer was holding the strap, there was little he could do to fight back…
The deck rolled beneath him, one sole slipping on the metal. The moment it took to stabilise himself left him open to attack. Kang drove an elbow against his damaged rib.
He cried out in pain, almost falling. Kang jerked his wrist from Eddie’s grip and slammed the gun against his head. This time, the Yorkshireman went down. He slithered across the hold as the plane banked more steeply, one flailing hand catching Kang’s shin. He grabbed at it, but his fingers only closed around cloth.
It was all he had. He squeezed his fist into a ball, clutching the material like a lifeline.
Kang yelled as Eddie’s weight dragged his hand down the strap. He fired at his tormentor, but in his panic the shot went wide. The Antonov’s roll steepened, the floor dropping away from the two men.
Fabric slipped through Eddie’s fingers. He couldn’t hold on—
His free hand found another recessed hook in the deck as he lost his grip on Kang’s leg. He swung away, dangling from his new handhold.
With the other man’s weight gone, Kang was able to pull himself back up to the wall. His panting fear was quickly supplanted by murderous glee as he saw that his enemy was now at his mercy—
Metal screamed and tore — and the TEL fell away from the ramp.
Nina felt the cab swing around. The transporter was about to go—
She scrambled over the dashboard — and threw herself desperately out through the broken windshield on to the ramp.
Behind her, the roof sheared off as the truck finally broke free. It caught for an instant on the cable — then the winch brake gave way, the steel line unspooling madly as the vehicle tumbled into the empty sky.
Nina landed painfully beside the forward hydraulic jack. She tried to grab the steel column, but missed as the aircraft suddenly rolled upright, throwing her across the ramp.
Kang was flung back against the wall by the Antonov’s drunken reel. His shot went high. Eddie scrambled forward, driving himself shoulder-first into the colonel’s stomach. Kang folded double, the breath erupting from his lungs.